The Wildflowers
by ThunderThighs
Summary: Valentina moves to the Murder House from Maine, thinking she has nothing to lose. She soon realizes however that she is very, very wrong. OC/Tate Langdon. Rated M for the usual AHS shenanigans
1. Chapter 1

_Dear diary,_

 _On long car trips, the family mini-van is like a portable argument._

 _Auntie Evelyn drives, of course. She doesn't trust Leon with the car anymore, not after he drove her old Mazda into a brick wall straight after he got his permit._

 _She'll be sitting there, hands clutching the steering wheel, deathstaring the license plate of the car in front of us. She never, ever talks during road trips, she just glares out the windscreen with her lips pursed, handbag in her lap, ready to make a run for it if need be._

 _Leon, my brother, and the bane of my existence, sits in the passenger seat controlling the radio. When I argue that I should be allowed to sit there sometimes he starts talking all smart, saying that there's a hierarchy in this family and in it, he is above me. He says that since he's the oldest, I have to sit in the back with the cat in her cage._

 _The cat that hisses and claws every time there's a bump in the road, and scratches up car seats if she's ever let out._

 _However, sitting in the back gives me the best position to kick the back of his chair. My bare feet drum hard against the grey leather interior whenever he turns on a Metallica or Eminem song. And he'll reach an arm back to try and punch my legs. When he does this, I lay my legs to the side, draping them over Myrtle's cage._

 _Fran used to sit in the seats behind me, taking up a whole cushioned bench with her legs and bags. She used to reach over and pull my hair or ram the back of my seat with her knees if she got bored._

 _Fran never could sit still, she would have her legs hanging over the back of her seat one minute, and then she would be lying down in her seat the next. She used to say that car trips made her ADHD act up, just to have Evelyn reprimand her for making light of a mental condition so many struggled with every day. She would of course roll her eyes and go back to her video game or her MP3 player or whatever would be capturing her attention for the next few seconds._

 _Yes, I hate car trips, but this one feels different._

 _Today we're moving to Los Angeles from Maine. A long way, right?_

 _Fran died only one month ago, and already it feels like years. It feels like losing her had made me age fifty years, and I'm now an old woman looking over her ancient photo albums. Blowing off dust that has accumulated on the black and white pictures of old, dead family._

 _The van I'm sitting in is stiff and silent._

 _The tops of my thighs are getting stuck to the seats and unsticking loudly. We're pretending that 'Piano Man' by Billy Joel is enough to fill the awkward silence looming over us but we all know it's not._

 _I didn't want to move. I wanted to stay in the house where I lived with Fran and my Mom and my dog, Peanuts before they all died._

 _I wanted to stay there and remember them. But people grieve in different ways, and the way Evelyn chose to grieve was to force both me and my brother to pack our bags and move across the country to start a new life and make new friends._

 _Even Leon is quiet, and it seems like he never stops speaking. I know what he's thinking though. Once he turns eighteen he's out of here. Off to Alaska or Idaho or Italy or Australia or wherever in the world he wanted to go._

 _I yearn for the freedom he'll be getting in two short months. Because when he's gone I'll be stuck with only my emotionally vacant auntie and my dead sister's cat._

 _Evelyn, who is an angry driver on a good day, looks positively furious. I bet she can't even see her eyes are so narrowed._

 _I wont dare look in the back seat. It feels too empty without her. Being in this van doesn't seem right without her annoyingly high-pitched voice ringing in my ears. And I'd whine "Shut up Fran!" Like the ungrateful teenager I am. But now I wish that I had never said anything mean to her ever, because right now I'd gladly cut fifty years off fifty years of my life to hear her voice again._

 _Just to hear her screech along to the lyrics of a Black-Eyed-Peas song, I would gladly trade in my soul._

Just as I stopped writing that sentence The van screeched to a halt.

"This is the place." Auntie Evelyn said, grabbing her purse and hopping out of her car, slamming the door shut behind her.

"You're kidding me." Leon said flatly, also getting out of the car. He raised his sunglasses onto his head to get a closer look at the apparent castle we were staying in.

"I told you guys it was great! What were you expecting?" Auntie was trying so hard and it made me sort of sad.

Evelyn used to be the prettiest girl in Rose-Haven. She had long, thick wavy brown hair and green eyes like pine trees. Even as a teenager she had skin clear like a baby and teeth straight and white. Her smile won her sashes and crowns and ribbons. So many that there was a box up in our old attic stuffed with all of her old first place ribbons and trophies.

Now, because of a mixture of stress and age, her looks were beginning to fade tremendously. She got her first grey hair at age twenty-seven, six months after being granted custody of her late sister's three children. And now, six years later at the age of thirty-three, she had given up on dying her silver strands all together, and had settled on becoming an old, ugly spinster much younger than she thought she would.

Sometimes, (And she would never tell anyone this) Evelyn wished that it was her younger sister, Claire who had topped herself instead of her big sister, Virginia. She no doubt had more reasons to.

Twenty three and no single romantic prospect on the horizon. Working a job that, although was her dream, barely made enough money to pay the bills forcing her onto welfare. All of this, while still stuck in the shadow of her two big sisters.

One, an ex-beauty queen with enough diamond necklaces and tiara's to put the royal family to shame.

And another, a successful defense attorney with three beautiful and healthy children.

Evelyn was ashamed of these thoughts, and would stuff them away into the depths of her brain as quickly as they had surfaced. But they were still there, and they still made her sick.

Did Claire think this about her too? Probably. Even though the beautiful middle child was the most beautiful, Virginia was by far the most popular. Not only between the sisters, but with everyone else as well. She was kind. And smart, and funny and she had a way of making you feel special when you were talking to her that Evelyn had not experienced with anyone else.

Evelyn thought about Virginia when she looked at me. She said I looked like her in a lot of ways, but in some ways I also looked like my father. His name was Domenic Mancini, and I can barely remember him. And before Francesca died she never met her father at all.

He left when Virginia was still pregnant. To photograph the cheetah's in Iran for National Geographic. He died on the aeroplane ride home after six months away. He was eager to meet his new daughter, who his wife had named Francesca.

"I wasn't expecting a fucking castle." Leon replied, flicking his glasses back down over his eyes.

"Language! Don't swear in front of Valentina she is just a child!" Telling off Leon was a part of Auntie Evelyn's daily ritual. Along with doing laundry, getting her nails done and bathing in the blood of her virgin servants.

When I was young and my mother had just died, to make me feel better Leon used to tell me stories about the evil Countess Evelyn, who kept spiders as pets and could turn men to stone with just one look. He told me that checking inside her mouth was no good because vampires would hide their fangs during the daytime.  
The stories came to an end when I tried to stake my Auntie though the heart with a sharpened stick. It didn't work, and I was grounded for two weeks.

"She's not a child, she's nearly fifteen, right Val?" Leon looked to me and grinned.

I stayed silent, just smiling to myself. Auntie rolled her eyes and handed me two boxes. "Go put these in your room." She said "Yours is the one with the purple walls, I thought you'd like that one."

She smiled at me and I smiled back. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad. Maybe a new area would be just what we needed to heal after a loss this huge. My outlook was optimistic as I scaled the stairs to my new room and when I got in I set the boxes down on the floor and took my diary and pen out of my messenger bag once more.

 _The new house is bigger than I thought. Much bigger than the last one. And it looks haunted too, which is definitely a plus. Maybe I can meet someone at school who knows about the history here and can fill me in. Honestly, I'll be lucky if I make any friends at all._

One friend will be an improvement on how things were in Rose-Haven.

Anyway, I need to start unpacking now or I'll be sleeping on just a mattress so until next time,

Yours sincerely,  
Valentina Rose Mancini

 **(A/N: Thankyou for reading the first chapter of this story! I hope you liked it and if you did please review and tell me what you think I should work on or improve on)**


	2. Chapter 2

When I woke up the next morning I had almost forgotten everything that had happened.  
The feeling of the hot summer sun filtering through the blinds, casting light and shadow on my sleeping form was enough to make me forget my own name. I clenched my eyelids closer together before quickly prying them apart to look at the alarm clock sitting on my bedside table.

12:00 in flashing red lights. I must have forgotten to set it up last night, who knows what time it was? The intensity of the sun outside made me believe that it was closer to midday than the early hours of the morning, which meant that I had slept for about sixteen hours.

Is this what being a teenager is like? If my research on my brother is correct, then yes.

I swear, when Leon was round fifteen, all he could do was sleep. And if you tried to wake him up for whatever reason he would pelt the objects close to him at you. Which were mostly empty Diet Coke cans or the odd ash tray.  
Thankfully, only the most skilled could have an aim so good they could hit someone when they weren't looking and when they were half-asleep.

I groaned, not wanting to get up, but knowing that I had to. I tossed back my navy blue bedspread and got up quickly. The hardwood floor was cold against my bare feet, and I walked to my newly set up closet to find a pair of socks.

I cursed at myself for forgetting where the bathroom was, and I spent a good ten minutes wandering around the halls of my new home in my sky blue flannel pajamas looking for it. Finding a towel and gathering up my clothes for the day I sighed deeply and closed the bathroom door behind me.

I studied my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Did this look like the face of a girl almost fifteen? To my Aunt I still looked like a child, complete with big, wide eyes and a naivete that was reserved only for babies and puppies. But my friends in Maine all told me that I'd gotten grown up the fastest. That I'd gotten pretty. Worse, that I'd gotten _sexy._ Disgusting stuff-right?

I poked and prodded at the acne on my chin and around my nose. Whenever I pointed it out Evelyn would be quick to say "Don't worry about it!" or "Everybody gets it at your age, it will fade in time!"

I wasn't as worried as she thought I was. What I was more scared of was the unruly-ness of my eyebrows, and the braces that seemed to take all of the attention on my face. They were obnoxiously shiny, with pink and yellow elastic bands in them. But, on the brightside I got them off in six months.

As I turned to twist the taps of the shower, out of the corner of my eye I could have sworn I saw a flash of a person. Just for a split-second someone was looking at me through the reflection of my bathroom mirror. I jumped and goosebumps raised on my arms. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

It was most likely nothing. People have experiences like this all the time right? They see things that aren't really there, and they make themselves crazy because of it. Well, I'm not crazy and there was no one in my mirror.

I turned the taps in the shower and felt the hot steam start to billow around my face. I took that as my cue to step in and start lathering anti-dandruff shampoo into my thick brown hair.

* * *

I hopped down the stairs to hopefully meet someone in the lounge. I hadn't seen anyone this morning, if you didn't count the strange apparition in the mirror.

I was usually woken up in the mornings by a loud bashing on my door. Maybe a broom handle or a bucket or something else hard enough to wake a sleeping teenager. It was weird, I caught a glimpse of the time on a clock on the wall as I walked past and I saw that it was nearly ten AM. I was never permitted to sleep in that late. Maybe it was a perk of losing nearly everyone important to you in your life. People aren't so hard on you.

My outfit was simple, a green tank-top and jean shorts, my hair was out and wild, as curly as I could make it. My feet were bare as I nearly almost ran down the steps. But I was stopped abruptly when I saw a woman I didn't know talking to my Aunt at the kitchen table.

"Vallie!" She called out. Lifting up an arm in a friendly wave. She never called me Vallie.

I walked over to the two women and eyed the blonde nervously. Her hair was piled on her head and impeccably styled. Her old hands were folded politely in her lap with the fingernails painted a dusty rose colour. Everything about her was so lovely, so why was she glaring?

"This is Constance, she lives next door." Evelyn went on "She just came over to drop off some cupcakes and welcome us to the neighbourhood!" She gestured to a plate of four vanilla cupcakes with baby pink frosting, decorated with heart shaped sprinkles.

"Constance, this is my daughter Valentina." She said, her plastic smile not faltering. I felt my stomach lurch. Why would she say something like that?

I swallowed my feelings and managed to utter out a simple "Hi." Towards the woman who seemed to be taking her attention away from my hair, and focusing it on the heart shaped locket around my neck. I stood there for a few seconds, and the conversation picked back up, about where I was being sent to school and when, and where on earth Leon was, why couldn't that boy stick around at least sometimes? At least to clean up.

I left, turning on my heels and walking back up the creaking steps to my room, where sat down on my bed and searched through my messenger bag for my diary.

I flipped through my old entries. Reading over the parts near the beginning, from before Fran died. I hated myself back then, even more than I do now. My entries used to be full of calorie counting, messy handwriting and self loathing paragraphs talking about how much I despised my thighs, hated my stomach and reviled my upper arms.

After Fran, that all went away. All of the anger at myself left and made me angry at the world. I wouldn't sit in my room and cry and write messy pages in my journal anymore, I would just sit.

I hadn't been the same in so long. And I knew everybody could tell.

Of course they could tell. They just didn't care.

I let tears sting my cheeks for the first time in forever without trying like hell to hold them back. But Leon was gone, and Evelyn was downstairs with Constance, so nobody would be able to see my one allowed moment of weakness.

My silent tears turned into big, loud sobs and were I wearing makeup it would no doubt be smeared beyond all recognition.  
My arms were wrapped around my torso tight, not to comfort, but to somehow hold myself together.

Hard, fat raindrops fell from my eyes and onto the notebook paper in my lap, smearing the ink from my fountain pen.

I looked up from my diary, reading the words scrawled so ugly across the page, to my doorway.

I was shocked to see someone standing there. The person from the mirror.

He looked shocked. Maybe not shocked, more like a mixture of scared and concerned. I didn't say anything, but my face flushed a deep red at seeing somebody see me like this. Let alone a stranger.

His mouth was open, but only to quickly say "Sorry."

After that he left so quick it was almost like he disappeared and I was left by myself, confused and crying all alone in a house with a lying aunt, a suspicious neighbour and a boy who came and left so quick he could have been a ghost.


End file.
